River of Gods (67 page)

"They'd have had your feet down to the bones in twenty seconds,"
Ramanandacharya says.

"Fuck up, fat boy." Shiv smacks him again because he was
scared by the scarab robots. Ramanandacharya takes a step, takes
another. The ring of robots flows with him. Yogendra brushes the
knife tip against Ramanandacharya's groin.

The temple colonnade is the same dismal, dripping shell of
graffittied plaster and folk-art religious daubings Shiv scanned from
the battlement but Ramanandacharya's Kirlian signature activates
banks of blue flood lamps and Shiv finds he is holding his breath.
The suddhavasa within is a cube of translucent plastic, glowing at
the edges under the sharp blue light. The scarab robots fall back
into their orbit. Ramanandacharya lifts his hands to the translucent
plastic yoni of the airlock door. A digit pad resolves out of the
fluid surface.

Ramanandacharya moves to tap in a code; the knife flashes,
Ramanandacharya cries out, seizes his hand. Blood wells from a
hairline cut down his right forefinger.

"You do it." Yogendra waves the knife blade at Shiv.

"What?"

"He could have tricks, traps, things we don't know. He thinks
soon as we have it, he's going to die anyway. You use the code."

Ramanandacharya's eyes widen as Shiv takes out the palmer and starts
to enter the door password.

"Where did you get this? Dane? Where's Dane?"

"Hospital," Shiv says. "Cat got his tongue."
Yogendra giggles. The pad sinks back into the surface of the smart
plastic (which Shiv thinks is cooler than he will ever allow to a
chuutya like Ramanandacharya) and the door clicks anticlimactically
open.

The decryption system is a luminous plastic garbhagriha small enough
to make Shiv itchily claustrophobic.

"Where's the computer?" Shiv asks.

"The whole thing is the computer," Ramanandacharya says and
with a wave of his hands turns the walls translucent. Protein
circuitry woven dense as Varanasi silk, as nerve fibres, is packed
into the walls. Fluids bubble around the net of artificial neurones.
Shiv notices he's shivering in his wet combats.

"Why is it so fucking cold in here?"

"My central quantum processing unit needs a constant low
temperature."

"Your what?"

Ramanandacharya runs his hands over a slotted titanium cylinder head
in the otherwise blemishless plastic wall.

"He dreams in code," he says. Shiv bends forward to read
the inscription on the metal disc.
Sir William Gates
.

"What is this?"

"An immortal soul. Or so he believed. Uploaded memories, a
bodhisoft. How the Americans imagine they can beat death. One of the
greatest minds of his generation—all this is because of him.
Now he works for me."

"Just get me this file and put it on here." Shiv smacks
Ramanandacharya on the side of the head with the palmer.

"Oh, not the Tabernacle crypt, the CIA will kill me, I am a dead
man," Ramanandacharya pleads then shuts his foolish blabbering
mouth up, summons another code pad out of the plastic, and enters a
short sequence. Shiv thinks about the frozen soul. He's read of these
things, circling in bangles of superconducting ceramic. All of a
life: its sex, its books, its music and magazines, its friends and
dinners and cups of coffee, its lovers and enemies, its moments when
you punch your fists in the air and go jai! and when you want to kill
everything, all reduced down to something you give a woman in a bar
to slip around her wrist.

"One thing," Ramanandacharya says as he passes the loaded
palmer to Shiv, "what do you want it for?"

"N. K. Jivanjee wants to talk to men from space," Shiv
says. He slips the palmer into one of his many pants pockets. "Let's
get out of here." The trick with the ring parts the scarab
robots again; Shiv sees on Ramanandacharya's face that he thinks they
will let him go, then sees that face change as Yogendra prods him
with the gun to walk on. It is not a pretty or edifying thing, to see
a fat man wet with fear. Shiv cuffs the dataraja again.

"Will you stop that, that is so annoying," Ramanandacharya
flares.

Yogendra makes him take them back down through the tourist gate into
the old Indian army camp. They squeeze through the gap in the
sheeting. Shiv mounts his bike, kicks up the engine. Good and true
little Japanese motor. He looks round for Yogendra, finds him
standing over the kneeling Ramanandacharya with the muzzle of the
Stechkin in the dataraja's mouth. He licks it. He runs his tongue
round the muzzle, licking it lapping it loving it. Yogendra grins.

"Leave him!"

Yogendra frowns, genuinely, deeply vexed. "Why? He's over and
done."

"Leave him. We got to go."

"He can call people up after us."

"Leave him!"

Yogendra makes no move.

"Fuck you!" Shiv dismounts, pulls out a brace of taser
mines and drops them in a ring around Ramanandacharya. "Now
leave him." Yogendra shrugs, puts up his piece and slides it
inside his pants pocket. Shiv thumbs the control switch that arms the
mines.

"Thank you thank you thank you," Ramanandacharya weeps.

"Don't beg, I hate begging," Shiv says. "Have some
fucking dignity, man." Nawab of fucking Chunar. Let's see any of
your forty women sleep with you after this. Shiv twists the throttle
and rips off on the Japanese trail bike, Yogendra on his wheel. The
deed is done, there is no need for stealth or caution. It's lights on
engines open roaring down through the town past the glowing egg of
the data centre and then the last light of Chunar and the exultation
hits. It is done. They got it and they are getting away. A fringe of
rain-soaked dawn lights the eastern horizon; by the time it fully
opens, Shiv realises, he will be back in his city and he will have
his prize and all his owings will be paid and he will be free, he
will be a raja and no one will dare deny him again. He lets out a
whoop, sends his bike careering madly all over the road, swooping
from one side to the other, yipping and cawing and yawping crazier
than any of the crazy jackals out there in the night. He swings
deliberately close to the soft edge of the road, taunting the cracked
blacktop, the treacherous gravel. Nothing can touch Shiv Faraji.

On an inside sweep, Shiv hears it. Running feet in the rural predawn.
Titanium-shod feet, as much felt through the bike's suspension as
heard, gaining on them, faster than any running thing should. Shiv
glances back. There is enough light in the sky to make out the
pursuer. It holds its body low to the ground, poised, balanced; it
paces on two strong legs like some monstrous demon bird released upon
them from the high castle. It is gaining steadily. A glance at the
speedo tells Shiv it is doing at least eighty.

Yogendra opens up his throttles a second after Shiv but to take the
bikes up to the max on this crumbling, greasy rural road is as sure a
death as the thing loping behind them. Shiv bends low over the
handlebars, trying to make himself as small a target as possible for
whatever esoteric firepower the machine carries. The turnoff must be
soon. He can hear the metal beat over the drone of the Yokohama
motor. That tree, that poster for bottled water, it's here, surely.
So busy looking, he almost misses Yogendra swing the bike across the
blacktop and off on to the farm path. Panicked, Shiv brakes,
oversteers, sticks a foot, almost spills across the country road
before he brings the bike on to the sand track.

He saw it. There, behind him, down that road, pounding away, grey in
the indigo, like it would never stop, never tire, keep running and
running after them round the whole round world.

The dal bushes give way to hard-packed sand pocked with rain. The
tires kick up sprays of hardpan and there is the boat, where they
left it, anchor run into the sand, pulled round on the current, low
in the river from heavy bilges, and there is a Brahmin beside it,
waist deep in the stream, his thread across his shoulder, pouring
water from his cupped hands and chanting the dawn salutation of
Mother Ganga. Shiv skids the bike to a halt, splashes into the water,
starts to heave the hot machine into the boat.

"Leave leave leave!" Yogendra screams.

The Brahmin chants.

"They can track us through them," Shiv yells.

"They can track us through the mines." Yogendra runs his
bike down into the stream, it falls with a splash, starts to fade
into the river quicksand. He pulls up the anchor as Shiv rolls into
the boat. It rocks sickeningly and there is a nasty amount of water
under the seating but by now he cannot get any wetter but he can be a
lot more dead. The robots looms over the dune crest and rears up to
its full height. It is some evil stalking rakshasa, part bird part
spider, unfolding palps and manipulators and a brace of machine guns
from its mandibles.

The Brahmin stares at that.

Yogendra dives for the engine. Pull one pull two. The hunter takes a
step down the sandy bank to better its aim. Pull three. The engine
starts. The boat surges away. Ramanandacharya's machine takes a leap
to land knee-joint deep in the water. Its head swivels on to target.
Yogendra heads for the centre of the stream. The robot wades after
them. Then Shiv remembers Anand's clever little grenade in one of his
pockets. Bullets send the water exploding up behind Yogendra in the
stern. He dives flat. The Brahmin in the shallows crouches, covers
his head. The grenade lobs through the air in a graceful, glittering
arc. It falls with a splash. There is nothing to see, nothing to hear
but the tiniest of cracks that is the capacitors discharging. The
robot freezes. The guns veer skywards, ripping the dawn with bullets.
It sags on its knees, goes down like a gutshot gunda. Its mandibles
and graspers flex open, it tips forward into the silt. The soft
silvery quicksand takes it almost immediately.

Shiv stands in the boat. He points at the felled robot. He laughs,
huge, helpless, joyful laughter. He cannot stop. Tears stream down
his face, mingling with the rain. He can hardly draw breath. He has
to sit down. It hurts, it hurts.

"Should have killed him," Yogendra mutters at the tiller.
Shiv waves him away. Nothing can press down or nay-say him. The
laughter passes into joy, a simple, searing ecstasy that he is alive,
that it is over now. He lies back on the bench, lets the rain fall on
his face and looks up at the purple banding of clouds that is another
day unfurling over his Varanasi, another day for Shiv. Shiv raja.
Maha raja. Raja of rajas. Maybe he will work for the Naths again;
maybe his name will open other doors for him; maybe he will go into
his own business, not body parts, not meat, meat betrays. Maybe he
will go to that lavda Anand and make him an offer.

He can make plans again. And he can smell marigolds.

A small noise, a small movement of the boat.

The knife goes in so smooth, so thin and clean, so sharp so pure it
challenges Shiv to express its shock. It is exquisite. It is
unutterable. The blade stabs cleanly through skin, muscle, blood
vessels, serrated edge grating along rib until the hooked tip rests
inside his lung. There is no pain, only a sense of perfect sharpness,
and of the blood foaming into his punctured lung. The blade kicks
inside him to the pulse of his body. Shiv tries to speak. The sounds
click and bubble and will not form words. It stays like this for a
long time, wide-eyed with shock. Then Yogendra pulls the blade and
pain shrieks from Shiv as the knife hooks out his lung. He turns to
Yogendra, hands raised to fend off the next blow. The knife comes
twisting in again, Shiv catches it between the thumb and forefinger
of his left hand. The knife cuts deep, down to the joint, but he
holds it. He holds it. Now he can hear the frenzied puffing of two
men caught in a fight of death. They strike at each other in
desperate silence as the boat wallows. With his free hand Yogendra
grabs for the palmer. Shiv slaps out, grabs for Yogendra, for
anything. He seizes the string of pearls around the boy's neck, pulls
it tight, grips it hard to hold himself up. Yogendra whips the knife
free from Shiv's grasp, ripping the barbed edge along the bone. Shiv
lets out a high, keening whine that passes into a bloody, drowning
burble. His breath flutters the edge of his wound. Then Shiv sees the
loathing, the contempt, the animal arrogance and disdain the grey
light reveals in Yogendra's face and he knows that he has always felt
this, always looked this way at him that this blade was always
coming. He reels back. The string snaps. Pearls bounce and roll. Shiv
slips on the pearls, loses balance, wheels, flails; goes over.

The water takes him cleanly, wholly. The roar of the traffic
transmitted through the concrete piers deafens him. He is deaf,
blind, dumb, weightless. Shiv wrestles, thrashes. He does not know
which way is up, where is air, light. Blue. He is embedded in blue.
Everywhere he looks, blue, forever in every direction. And black,
like smoke, his blood twining upwards. The blood, follow the blood.
But he has no strength and the air bubbles from the gash in his back,
he kicks but does not move, punches but does not stir Shiv fights
water, sinking deeper in to the blue, drawn down by his weaponry. His
lungs burn. There is nothing left in them but poison, ashes of his
body, but he cannot open his mouth, take that final, silent whoop of
water even though he knows he is dead. His head pounds, his eyeballs
are bursting, he sees his half-severed thumb wave futilely in the
blue, the great blue as he kicks and thrashes for life.

Blue, drawing him down. He thinks he sees a pattern in it; in the
dying fascination of brain cells burning out one by one he makes out
a face. A woman's face. Smiling. Come Shiv. Priya? Sai? Breathe. He
must breathe. He kicks, struggles. He has a huge erection in his
heavy, dragging combat pants laden with esoteric cyberweaponry and he
knows what must happen. But Yogendra will not have the crypt.
Breathe.
He opens his mouth, his lungs and the blue rushes in and
he sees in the decaying embers of his brain who it is down there. It
is not Sai. It is not Priya. It is the gentle, homely face of the
woman he gave to the river, the woman whose ovaries he stole for
nothing, smiling, beckoning him to join her in the river and the blue
and redemption.